Date:         Sun, 6 Feb 2011 00:48:32 -0800
Reply-To:     Oxroad <oxroad@GMAIL.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Oxroad <oxroad@GMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Re: Friday: Is it a Van or what?
In-Reply-To:  <3A3653A2-C2CC-4D44-AF03-63C9331DA0AB@gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

I refer to my Vanagon as a bus. I feel it's my 1st amendment right. My
reasoning is my bus has an engine in the back and the driver sits on top of
the front tires just like on a city bus.

City busses aren't round anymore, they're pretty square, and we still call
them busses.

The emblem from VW on the back of my bus says "CAMPING". I don't refer to it
as "Camping" but I do sometimes say "Campmobile."
It has a MICROBUS badge on the back too. I don't refer to it as "Microbus"
though-- although as a result of that badge I think a parking
ticket I once got said "Microbus" as the model.

A friend of mine has a restaurant in Brooklyn and lots of people refer to it
and other restaurants there as "the store."
That never seemed odd to me because I heard it growing up back east all the
time. I don't know where "store" comes from.
This particular restaurant is in a row of stores and things on a city street
next to stores and businesses, but really it's a restaurant.
One day I said to a friend visiting NY from the midwest "Siggy's too busy
with the store to come out tonight."

My visiting friend said, "She has a store, too?!" I meant the restaurant of
course. We call that sort of thing a store where I'm from.
And we call the Vanagon a Bus

As near as I can tell from literature I have, VW referred to most early
busses as station wagons. So I'm not sure the moniker came from VW. Maybe
Microbus came from VW(?) I don't know.

It's odd that the name "station wagon" has never been accepted by the public
as a name for the Bus even though VW sold them with that name for years
it seems to me.

I guess the 411 and 412 had name badges on them and the Karmann Ghia, but I
think the Beetle and the Squareback and the Fastback and the Station Wagon
all came with no name badge except the Volkswagen badge. I'm willing to be
wrong, but that's how I remember it.

So where I'm going with this is; it seems to me "Bus" here is the states is
a nickname. With nicknames there's no hard and fast rule, methinks. So from
where I sit I can see a Bus in my driveway, and it looks like Scooter left
his skateboard next to it.

Best,
Jeff
83.5 Westy
LA,CA